[Fourlanders] another question for the brain trust

[Rogers, Ron]

Bob,
I have read everyone's comments and truly believe that it depends on the
manufacturer of the light fixture you plan to use, and if they
consciously built their product to pass the consumer products RF
emissions testing. The market is now being flooded with all sorts of
Chinese crap that does not come close to passing the emissions
requirements.

I have a mixture of florescent fixtures in my garage and basement. Some
are quiet and others are pure trash and hash producers. You can use a
small transistor AM broadcast radio to quickly see. 

We had a recent discovery during our county ARES SET exercise in Oct. We
were operating a county-wide 2 meter simplex test from the Forsyth
hospital to various mobile units dispatched to numerous locations around
the county. We were also using a new 144-440 dual band antenna we had
just installed on the roof along with a newly converted GE Phoenix VHF
radio I had donated to the permanent ham radio installation at the
hospital. I was on site, along with County EC W4PX and Tom, KI4WOU, who
was running the net.

During the drill, we noticed some weaker signals from mobiles dispatched
to further corners of the county were being interfered with (and totally
unreadable sometimes) by a hashy buzzing sound, and this was while using
FM !! The room we operated in had overhead fluorescent lighting. I
reached over an turned off the lights to see if it made a difference.
BINGO !! Noise all gone.

So, I suggest you purchase 1 light fixture like you plan to install and
really put it through some testing first. Might be a good idea to also
check out the country of origin, too.

Ron
WW8RR


-----Original Message-----
From: fourlanders-bounces at contesting.com
[mailto:fourlanders-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of Bob Lear
Sent: Sunday, February 01, 2009 11:10 PM
To: fourlanders at contesting.com
Subject: [Fourlanders] another question for the brain trust

Does anyone have info or experience with RFI/TVI from Florescent lamps?

I noticed last night that some of the interference I was getting on
Channel 2 (analog, off the air with rabbit ears) was caused by one of
the florescent fixtures here in the basement where we are living.  It
appears to be the new 4 bulb fixture added for the kitchen.  The others
were existing when I bought the house and are a good bit older.  They
don't cause interference on channel 2 when the offender is turned off. 
I would have expected the older ones to be more of a problem than the
newer ones but I may be wrong and certainly don't know for sure.


Anyway, it got me to thinking about what I am planning for the shack in
the new building.  I have just finished roughing in the wiring to put
eight, four bulb florescent fixtures on the ceiling in the shack for
good lighting.  I understand that the newer florescents have electronic
ballasts and my electrician said that soon we won't be able to get
ballasts for the older units as they will stop making them in favor of
the newer types.  He didn't say anything about RF noise, but he's not a
ham either.

So, an I setting myself up for RFI from these new fixtures in the shack?

  I do like to have a lot of good light in a work area like that and in
the operating vicinity and I've always liked florescent lighting anyway
as it's so white and cool.

Any comments, any alternatives??

Thanks, Bob

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